


better luck next time

by Iambic



Category: Marvel 616, X-Factor (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-26
Updated: 2010-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:16:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/pseuds/Iambic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people got a way with words. Rictor doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	better luck next time

This is one of those things he struggles with. One of those things he knows he should do, he has to do, he'll regret if he doesn't, but - he can't. He'll open his mouth and the words will die on his tongue. He can't do it. It's not a matter of want or fear or second thoughts.

Julio can't articulate. It's a problem.

Language. He fucking hates language. Words wrapped in connotation, different meanings to everyone, and while he can compensate for this, it all falls apart around Shatterstar, who wouldn't know a connotation if it hit him with one of Tabitha's time-bombs. Julio can speak Spanish and English and passable Cadre; he knows hand signals and code words, and Cable taught these same symbols to Shatterstar. Shatterstar speaks more languages than Julio can name offhand. And then there are the moments when it's like he can't speak any of Julio's native tongues, like the words make sense but the meanings slide completely past each other.

And Julio, for that matter, never learned the words that count. He can describe a fight and sell a gun and insult anyone he would so wish. He can brag about his own prowess and complain about whatever could possibly be going wrong in his life. But he can't for the life of him explain why it is that he's choking up every time 'Star spares him an extra glance. He can't explain why he's got the urge to spill his guts whenever they get a moment to themselves. And he tries anyway, but gives up every time after scrambling for words he just doesn't know.

For all his family, all his comrades and classmates and teachers, no one's bothered to tell him about this kind of thing.

"We will have to leave soon," Shatterstar says, and he's looking at the door like he's expecting Cable to come bashing it down like he used to, shouting out the troops for another life-or-gruesome-death adventure. There's no one now but him and Rictor, but old habits die hard.

Now would be the time. Julio could say something about how 'Star is the only person who could possibly be doing this with him, here, now, across Mexico and out into the wide world. Something about trust, something about value, something about how these things just fit together like the continents, like the rock they're standing over. He could say that nothing shakes him so badly these days.

He says, "Then let's get going," and gives up again.

\--

Two days after the world fell apart in a blinding whiteness, Julio stumbles out of the motel he's crashing indefinitely in and thinks about semantics. Something he never really cared for, or about. Something Shatterstar never really understood.

His life's gone and divided itself up again, adding a finale and an epilogue, because he can't see this state being anything but a decline. That's it, Rictor, time to give up the ghost. He's gonna go down, fast or slow, slowly deconstructing or hitting the concrete on a desperate bid for something better. He grasps at words, rationalisation, but that's never been his strong point. He can't explain himself. He can't understand what it is that's hurt him the most. He's Rictor-that-was, man who went and lost the earth and lost the stars and now he's just got a bit of night air to cling to, a little bit of early dawn to claim for his own.

He downs a cup of coffee and doesn't tip when he shuffles out of the dingy cafe. He wanders into the street, unmindful of traffic. No cars rush by to pull him down, grind him under, and he might just regret that.

Julio can't pinpoint the moment he realised that there is one way to go, but the phrase fills his head when he looks up, at the building he's hiding in. _I'm too far away from the ground._

He can climb up, even if he can't climb down. Can fall, even if he can't shake. Can't say he won't miss anything, or be missed, but he's got to feel that connection. If words are the only thing that aren't failing him, everything is already horribly, horribly wrong.

It's gonna hurt like a bitch and he's gonna be remembered cruelly, in whispers, in bitter regret and guilt, and that's not what he wants. But it's all he's going to get. Alive or dead, he's not a mutant, and he's not human, and he's not anyone's best friend, and he's not the teammate you want on your side. He can't move the earth for anyone. He can barely move himself.

He shuts his eyes, feels nothing all around him, and lets it all happen to him.

\--

Moments like when he rushes out to take the shots for Siryn - moments when they all stand down and there's nowhere to run to - he knows what he's looking for. Moments when he's tied to a cross or nothing more than Pietro's lackey, he can't understand why he thinks he'll find anything. Sometime's the earth's so close he can smell it, and sometimes he just keeps rising.

Some nights he dreams about flying, and wakes up sweat-soaked and shouting. Terry glares at him in the mornings after but doesn't comment. Guido sleeps through it. Monet honestly doesn't give a damn, and that's how Julio likes it.

Terry asks him, quietly, if he's okay. It's the first time since losing her baby that she thinks to care about anyone else, and Julio should probably feel touched that she thought to care about him.

He says the thing that shrink said to him, back when they got their psycho levels measured in Mutant Town-that-was. "There's good days, and bad days."

No, he doesn't know what he means, either.

\--

Julio can swear in three languages. One of them he only lets himself lapse into when it's that or scream. The syllables taste wrong on his tongue, like he's saying them all years too late.

\--

And then everything turns around and Shatterstar's back, leaping in and out of action and never really letting things slow down. It's a fight, and then Cortex lets him free and 'Star kisses him and Julio kisses back and he _doesn't have to say anything_.

But he wants to. He's got words and words, piled up from the unwillingness to speak, piled up and waiting for him to let them loose. And he still can't communicate, but despair does great things for the vocabulary. So with Guido and Maddox and the possibility of God as his witnesses, he says, "Can you stay?" and "Please don't go."

That's what it was. That's all it's ever been. Powers to move the ground and feel the world turn and a heartbeat beside him and the impatient confusion and the impulse and the willingness to go out there and live, live for everything they were never supposed to be. There was always the two of them, even when there were more, even when there were none at all.

Julio shakes and the ground stays still and Shatterstar smiles and the words don't come, they still don't come.


End file.
